Windows Phone-powered Nokia Lumia – Competitive but not extraordinary!

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When we talk about smartphones from an unbiased consumer's perspective, our contemporary scope gets limited to conceptions from Samsung, Apple, and to some extent, Motorola, Blackberry and HTC. This is clearly ironic, as it was the once dominant Nokia who brought out the very first 'true' smartphone (Nokia 9210 Communicator) in 2000, with an open source Symbian OS. Now, the trend (and customer loyalty) might seem to be a tad bit acrid, but analysts and pundits have always seen the 'writing on the wall' for the Finnish giant. As a matter of fact, their smartphone sales have taken a malefic hit from 38 percent market share in 2010 to a paltry 15 percent in 2011.

Nokia Lumia

So, will their latest release of Lumia 800 stand up to the challenge, and change Nokia's smartphone oriented fortunes? Well, for this to happen, two factors need to work in Nokia's favor. The first antecedent obviously entails the overall quality of the phone (with features like processing power, multimedia attributes, connectivity etc). And the second point directly revolves around customer response and brand loyalty. So, without further ado, let us see how Lumia 800 has fared (up till now) on these two important commercial constituents.

Competitive stance

With the release of Lumia 800, Nokia has already moved on to the relatively new Windows platform, from their earlier outings of Symbian and MeeGo OS. But from a design perspective, Lumia 800 is still based on the 'wooden plank' bearing of Nokia's previous N9 set, though some individual features have been revamped, with a smaller 3.7-inch display for accommodating the capacitive soft-keys, and the LED flash moving at the top of the much touted Carl Zeiss camera lens.

Beyond the distinct visual allure, the heavier and thicker Lumia actually gets beaten in almost every aspect as compared to big guns like Samsung Galaxy Nexus and Apple iPhone 4S. Its display consists of pixel impermeability at 800 by 480 resolution, while iPhone boasts of a much refined Retina Display, and Galaxy Nexus comprises of a whopping 1280 by 720 pixels.

Moving on to the processing power, Lumia 800 is infused with a single core processor (clocked at 1.4GHz) with 512MB of RAM. In comparison, iPhone 4S and Galaxy Nexus are both powered by dual core processors. Even on the camera front, the system includes a well-to-do 8 MP set up, but with 720p video capturing capability (as opposed to 1080p HD attributes of the 'big guns'). Moreover, adding to the competitive 'misery', Lumia totally eschews a front facing camera, along with avoiding a slew of simplistic features like expandable memory, HDMI and NFC.

Erratic response

There has been some brouhaha and palaver in the electronic circle about Microsoft's Windows platform posing as one of the exalted 'holy trinity' of mobile operating systems, along with iOS and Android. In relation to this, Nokia and Microsoft had expeditiously teamed up to promote Lumia 800, so much so as to tout it as 'the first real Windows Phone device'. As a matter of fact, the corporate bonding up was accentuated by the deal of sharing more hardware solutions between the two companies.

Now, the customer response – in spite of the vigorous endorsement – has been capricious to say the least. For example, a survey done by French bank BNP Paribas in December showed that only 2 percent of European mobile phone owners wanted to buy the Lumia 800. On the other hand, Nokia is already claiming that the number of pre-orders for the Lumia 800 smartphone in the Britain is higher than for any previous Nokia smartphone system.

In this commercially fluctuating circumstance, it would be aptly valid to bring up the case of the nascent Indian customer base, who traditionally has been loyal supporter of Nokia's mobile devices. And now India being one of the rampantly emerging markets for smartphones, Nokia would certainly look forth to score their revenues in the subcontinent.

Our call

Lumia 800 certainly embodies a high-end mobile device offering a different user experience, which is independent from the perceived domination of Apple and Android. But at the same time, the question still balefully lingers - does it have the sufficient powertrain to appeal the 'adventurous' customer?

So, at the end of the day, it all boils down to individual preference. Nokia perhaps could have improved in certain areas, starting from the device's ports to camera system. Moreover, given Lumia 800's relatively high pricing (at around $660), some of us had seriously hoped for a more refined and powerful contraption, which in turn would have ardently complimented its novel Windows pedigree.